Tag: haiku

poetry

Add Another Book to the List!

carolyncordon

I now have another book to add to my list of books written, this most recent book is the smallest, but by no means the least. This means I now have eight books published! “Angles on Ankles” is a book of poetry, a chapbook, of around twenty poems, all focused on my most recent life challenge.

This challenge was the breaking of my right ankle, on AFL Grand Final day, a painful challenge for sure, but one which gave me plenty of resting times, which I used to write poems about the whole new experience.

There are poems that rhyme, others that don’t, there are Senryu poems, and there longer and more prosey kinds of poems, all about my right leg! And on the front cover, what’s in that photograph? Well it’s a photo of my broken right ankle, encased in a moon boot!

Before this challenge occurred, I’d barely ever even thought about moon boot, now I’m writing poetry about them. I love the way our life experiences can add brand new subjects to write about! I had the chance to try out some of the poems in this new collection, and I was happy with how it all went.

It was my first time for going out to attend a writing related event, rather than a medical appointment, since I broke my ankle, and it felt great! It was a poetry reading, a monthly one I almost always attend. I wasn’t able to go last month, but a dear friend offered to take me there, and bring me home again.

Thanks Colleen, you were awesome! Colleen and I have been friends for about twenty years, and I was thrilled to be attending a poetry reading, with her as the guest poet! Colleen came to my place to take me there, put away my walking frame, and getting it out for me as needed, and I was so glad to have here there.

The poetry she read was great too, her poetry collection is a terrific book of poetry, about the small but so important things in life. Her work is so true, and finely written, it’s like she is sharing her many wisdoms learned through her life. If you like poetry, I strongly recommend you get a copy of her book!

Back to my own collection, I included a page of Senryu in this collection – I tried them out at a poetry reading today, and they were very well accepted. Senryu is a Japanese form of poetry, very similar to Haiku, but is is about people rather that about Nature, as Haiku is.

I found Senryu was just the best poetic form to comment on a few aspects of my broken ankle …

poetry, Uncategorized

Some Poetic Forms

carolyncordon

There are many different ways to write poetry, or ‘poetic forms’. Here are a few you may have heard of, but never tried to write, or have written in the traditional form, but not in a new, stripped back form.

I like playing with different poetic forms, and am always happy to try something new, when it comes to my attention. My poetic attempts may interest others, or maybe they won’t it doesn’t matter. Trying these things out, using my own knowledge in different ways is good for my brain!

Give some of these forms a try yourself, and see whether your own brain feels pleasantly stretched in new ways! Firstly, I love sonnets, short poems of fourteen lines. They are distinguished by very strict rhyming schemes, in several different styles, as below:

  • Spenserian sonnet. 3 quatrains and a couplet – “abab bcbc cdcd ee”
  • english(shakespearean) sonnet. 3 quatrains of “abab cdcd efef” followed by a single couplet.
  • italian(petrarchan) sonnet. octave of “abba abba” then a sestet of “cdc cdc”

I have written in these three styles, having had some of my poems published in books, and online, and am proud of my work in the form. But today, I found a brand new form of the sonnet, and I hurriedly ‘gave it a go’!

This new form is the Monosyllabic Sonnet. I found it in an email, sent by a poetic friend, with details of his own poetry blog, https://playground.poetry.blog/ I strongly suggest you go there and explore the many poetic forms Paul has on display on his blog. I have a few of my own attempts at the forms Paul talks about, and encourage you to have a go too, and get involved in what Paul is doing, sharing poetry with the world!

So with the Monosyllabic Sonnet, the poet is to stick to the rhyming schemes for sonnets, as I have put above, but instead of writing in iambic pentametre, you are to write just one word of one syllable only, for each line, instead of longer lines of far more syllables for each line. You are also free to use the title of your poem to fill in more meaning to the poem, by indicating what it is about to aid with clarity.

Here is a new poem I have written to demonstrate what is meant:

On bringing meaning, by sharing your wisdom.

 

We

live, 

free 

give.

 

 

Wonder

much,

ponder 

such …

 

You 

know?

Do 

so!

 

Yell!

Tell!

 

If you like this poetic form please feel free to say so! If you wish, you can share your own attempt at writing a Monosyllabic Sonnet of your own.

 

Now a look at the short Japanese poems. The Haiku is the best know form of Japanese Poems. In the Western world, Haiku are often presented as being written in three lines, with five syllables in the first and final lines, and seven syllables in the middle line. This though is not quite what the Haiku is in its ‘native’ world, where the Haiku is an exceptionally short poem, usually of fewer characters than the English form indicates.

For this blog though, I am going to talk about a related poetry form, the Senryu. Where Haiku relates to poems written about Nature, and referring to the season, the Senryu is written about people, and can more than Haiku, be a funny poem, talking about perhaps a comical part of human nature.

The Senryu has the same form as Haiku, being a short poem, usually of three lines, short, long, short, as with the Haiku. I have written a new poem in this form, and hope you enjoy my words. Again, feel free to comment, and have a go yourself, if you feel so inspired! I love comments on this blog.

 

My Senryu:

 

Wisdom is

saying very little,

or staying mute …

 

 

 

 

poetry

Creative Writing 4 – Using Poem of Another

carolyncordon

No, Not Plagiarism!

Fear not, I’m not advising anyone to use poems of other poets, and saying they are your poems. This is plagiarism and is rightly against the law. What I am referring to is to use the poems of other poets are inspirations, and ‘templates’ perhaps.

I’ve done this workshop in my favorite venue in Gawler, with gratifying results in the past.

To do this workshop, I advise you either raid your own stash of poetry books, or visit the library and borrow some of theirs.

poetry books

 

Workshop details

  • Other people’s poems can be an unending supply of ideas for the writing of your own poem. Some people think that if you read the poetry of others, you will somehow copy that work, and it will be stealing, instead of being creative.
  • I certainly don’t agree with that idea, I’ve often been inspired by the poems of others, and have come up with something perhaps on the same or a similar subject, but it quite a different form. There are millions of words in the English language, and it is fine to take words from the languages of others and use them too, English is famous for that!
  • I want everyone to find one poetry collections from the ones you are using, to find one tome that seems to ‘speak to you’. This means, one that is on a topic you like, or written in a way you find interesting, or even exciting. Once you have the book you want to use, find a poem or several poems, and write them out on your paper.
  • This poem will be your inspiration for writing a brand new poem for yourself today.
  • Take a poem, and change nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and make it a new poem in that way.
  • Or you can take the poem title and use that as the inspiration for a completely new poem.
  • Another way to use the other person’s work might be to take a particularly striking image or idea in their poem, and write your own poem using that as the title of, and inspiration for your own new poem.
  • These and other ideas can be fascinating ways into poetry, and I hope you are all as excited about what might happen, as I am!

 

My Poetic Response to this Workshop

I chose a poem from the book “Tadpoles in the Torrens”, which is a collection of poems written for children, that have much interest too, for adults. My chosen poem is ‘Cat Nap’ by well known Adelaide poet, Jules Leigh Koch.

For this exercise, I have change the animal to a dog, and followed the format of Jules’ poem, but as it applies to a dog instead of a cat.

 

“Dog Doze by Carolyn Cordon

Our pet dog

as loud

as a thunderstorm

 

Makes her home

in our house

and in our garden

 

To imagine prey

large as dragons

small as mice”

 

I feel I have captured the idea of a dog, in a similar way the other poet captured a cat, and that is what I was certainly trying to do. I am also thinking about writing a haiku poem, similar to the famous poem by well known Japanese Haiku poet Basho, which was written about a frog jumping into a pond.

My poem, if I manage to complete it to my satisfaction, will be about the well known birds, galahs, Australian birds who live around where I live. I love to see them as they fly all around, squawking loudly!

 

Carolyn

Carolyn Cordon, President Adelaide Plains Poets, writer, poet, dreamer, cloud watcher …

poetry

A Happy Coincidence

carolyncordon

Today was a pretty full on day, with weather that acted against doing too much. I have a chronic illness that means I am particularly badly affected by being too hot, and the summer we’re having at the moment in my part of South Australia is hot, perhaps the hottest ever, or at least since Australia was settled by white people.

When you know what your limitations are, you learn how to deal with them , so that’s what I did, I spent a minimum of time outside in the heat, staying inside as much as possible, where it was nowhere near as hot, then drove, in my air-conditioned car, to

Anyway, I got to the usual writing group venue in plenty of time, but I hadn’t had time at home to write my poem for the day, the final poem for the #poemadayfeb I have been doing for all of this month, even though, I’d looked up what the word for today and so knew it was ‘yourself’.

Others arrived at the meeting, we went through the usual items, telling of our writing related activities for the previous week, talking about some relevant issues relating to several events we will be involved in, for the coming months, and then doing our writing exercise.

The writing prompt for today was ‘night’, and I eventually settled down to do my writing, based on that them, but without any real idea on what I was going to write. In the back of my brain, I had my poetry prompt, as mentioned, and together with that was the writing prompt from today’s meeting.

So, ‘yourself’, and ‘dark’, were possibly travelling around in the back of my brain, what would happen? As it turned out, a lovely small poem happened.  This unexpected poem is a senryu, another Japanese poetry form, similar to the haiku, but about people, rather than nature.

I’m relatively happy with this small poem, and the others at the writing group though it was a good one too. I love the people in this group, we share our words with each other, but there is so much more to it. We may have begun as people who write, but we have become friends, ones who care about each other. If you have a writing group too, I hope you have such lovely experiences.

Anyway, this is my senryu:

 

Every night leads

to a new day, a new chance

to be yourself.

poetry

Tanka & Other Japanese Forms

carolyncordon

I was pleased today, to see that the poetry prompt for the #poemadayfeb event was the Tanka form of poetry. I have spent many years trying to perfect the writing of Haiku, and the similar style of Tanka, and am still trying to perfect them.

I suspect this will continue for the rest of my life, knowing that managing to write one good one, certainly does not mean you’ve ‘got it’! In my life, I think I’ve written a mere handful of fine Haiku, and I’m not sure I’ve every written a Tanka I would call fine …

But today, I am going to do my best at writing a good Tanka, because I’d like the poems I put up here to be all good poems, of various forms, and following the various given prompts for February 2019. A Tanka has a syllable count of 5/7/5/7/7 syllables, or fewer, and a Haiku has a syllable count of 5/7/5 syllables, or fewer. There is a lot more to these poetic forms, but that would be for another blog post …

This has been a wonderful month for me, I feel my poetry is really getting to a higher level, to some extent, and I am ever so grateful to Kathy Parker, Paul Kohn, and Laura Greaves for putting these words together for poets to use as prompts. The more I write poetry, the better I feel I am getting, and the more inspired I am feeling about my writing in general.

Yesterday I wrote my #poemadayfeb poem, and another poem, and the text for a picture book too, all in one inspired day. I don’t know if that picture book will ever become an actual book, but I like it, it’s a sweet little story about friendship, and I’m wishing I could draw well enough, to finish it off!

I’m going to have a bit of a go at doing illustrations for this picture book, just to see how it would look, and whether it might work. That’s a task for me, after I finish this blog post, by posting the Tanka I have now finished writing. It is based on what I heard this morning, and what I remember from other times. I’ve written it down here, and fiddled with it for about ten minutes, still not completely happy, but happier than I was, so it will have to do.

That’s the thing with writing, there’s still something else you might do to make it better, but editing has to stop somewhere if others are going to read your work, and having written that, here it is:

Tanka for the 18th of February, 2019
________________________

Gentle breeze blowing,

wind chimes, and sparrow song,

bring peaceful moments,

before my husband brings home

a cacophony of sound …